Wednesday, November 25, 2009

The Future, see it now.

Hi all, first thing first, please watch the video, or the rest of this post will be pretty meaningless.

OK, now that all your jaws are probably dropped to the floor, let's begin. I saw this clip today and I was blown away massively. I'm a geek and I get high on anything innovative, and this one definitely pushed me all the way to geekophoria. This is a product called SixthSense, invented by Pranav Mistry, an MIT PhD candidate. The way our lives can change once this product makes its way to the mass is tremendous. Unlike our other technological breakthrough which (most of the time) seperates our real world from the digital world, this one embeds the two. Imagine going to a grocery store with your shopping list, but instead of looking for the items yourself, the system loads the exact locations of each item and project live-size arrows onto the floor guiding you to it. Imagine pointing to your credit card and have your balance and due date displayed instantly. Better yet, you can have your statement displayed where you can scroll to a specific item and then expand it to display the bill you were paying for. This is made possible because the camera would have it all recorded! This is just so cool.

Btw, I think this is a similar path Microsoft is taking with their Project Natal (please google for more info). However, Project Natal's camera has to be connected to a Xbox and fixed onto a TV so it lacks the mobility SixthSense has. Project Natal is also more focused (entirely focused?) on video gaming and it's obviously not as broadly applied to everyday life (yet). Nonetheless, I think this is the direction computing in general is headed. Btw2, Pranav Mistry is ex-Microsoft.

For more information, google "Sixth Sense, Pranav Mistry". This guy is a pure genius.